usually, if the pyro comes through my first defenses, it can do enough damage to my eco to put me behind so critically, that it´s impossible to recover. So you build either outlaw or felon. both take really long and have problems to catch the pyro before it does enough damage. even if not, 1 jack is enough to tear down riots and porc. After this, we switched factories:http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/568180

ofc i didn´t win this either because of the skill-difference, but this game automatically laster 10 minutes in contrast to all the games before, wich maybe took 1-2 minutes. I wasn´t even as succesfull with my raids, but @Zenfur struggled hard in comparison. Also take into account that i messed up my eco and was exessing. If that would not have had happened, i might even have won? Pyro -> Jack seems to be a detrimental combo against shields.

and yes, IF you can get to the point where the shield-player can spam racketeers, it´s fine. the problem is more to get to this point.

Part of the problem is very unhealthy mechanic of burn - damage over time on pyro. Every raider or mex or windmill it touches just dies.

I suggested long time ago to rework all fire to make area damage over time instead a unit status - more kodachi style. This way only sluggish units or statics would suffer from fire.

I think that mostly Pyro is the problem, not only for shields. It's a riot raider and its main problem are static defenses. I think that it could be more reliant on its jump ability and less generalist with changes:5% speed reduction and 5-10% hp increase for compensation. HP increase is optional, as combined with jump ability it would make it better against statics. Yes I'm aware that speed reduction is non-linear, while hp above certain treshold is more linear.

It was katastrophe 's fail on micro, and commander killed pyro not shieldbots. Also I knew pyros were coming so I made dirtbag for scouting, which normally wouldn't happen.

I guess Snitch is a good answer, but not necessarily early game? I dunno, didn't test it. I think properly microed Pyro can kill Snitch for free - ignite and jump away. Also it's hard to use them to defend your base as it would explode in your base killing economy with it.

Although, pyros can shut down bandits easily due to outranging them (especially early game), I don't think they are the OP part. LLt sidearm works quite well for defending everything against them.Its more that placeholder/moderator/jack/sumo/firewalker has literally no answer(fun fact: using as few pyros as possible is how you win with JJ). Once JJ gets rolling its very difficult to stop them due to how well all the units synergize.

quote:I guess Snitch is a good answer, but not necessarily early game? I dunno, didn't test it. I think properly microed Pyro can kill Snitch for free - ignite and jump away. Also it's hard to use them to defend your base as it would explode in your base killing economy with it

I've thought about snitches for anti-pyro/koda. They cost 160 metal, which is equal to the koda and less than the pyro. Like most bombs, they'd be very situational though- pyro could fry it on one mistaken move so you'd need to put it somewhere the pyro is likely to go (e.g. foot of the cliffs to the starting points in Ravaged).

Alternatively, 4-5 bandits with a simple move command can sometimes run down a pyro if you time it right, but even if you do, you'll lose about three of them- and how often does one have 5 bandits to spare in the first couple of minutes?

Perhaps there might be an argument for swapping imp and snitch factories though. An imp can be safely used inside a base and although most early game cloak dies horribly to pyro, there is always the possibility of rushing a scythe (which seemed fairly successful in at least one of katastrophe's games) if you see one coming (and Knight maintains a disable option for cloak). Of course that means shield gets two completely different ways to disable attackers, bomb and Racketeer which, while it would make me very happy, might not be much fun for everyone else. I suppose Racketeer could be swapped to cloak in exchange for Sling though. In a way they might fit the facs respective philosophies better. Racketeer disabling might fit better into the whole "sneakiness" theme of cloaks while massed Slings could particularly benefit from shield cover being squishy and individually weak. Shield strikes me more as a brute force factory where individually not especially tough units gain strength from huddling together. Weakness to early pyro/koda aside though, I mostly like shield as they are.